Page tags

Add a new page

Information and FAQ

Important notice

The Flaming Lips Hub's server has not been running for a few years now for various reasons, including but not limited to: lack of time, lack of being able to justify running a hub server 24/7, and a general live music archiving/storing/sharing apathy after one too many hard drive failures and repeated massive loss of data.

If anyone would like to set one up, please feel free - and please drop me a message as I would love to pop in occasionally.

Who on earth are the Flaming Lips?

The Flaming Lips are a rock band from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They formed in 1983 and their style has been in constant development since the start - their recent sound has been described as anything from pop to alternative, electronic, psychedelic and space rock. Breakthrough albums were Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002), with the former coming towards the top of various "album of the year" listings and gaining the band a wider audience for its laid back summery mellow classics - a far cry from their beginnings. Yoshimi succeeded in catapulting the band into common knowledge.

Other than their achievements in the studio the band are possibly even more famous as a result of their legendary live shows. Named by Q magazine in 2002 as one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die", their huge confetti-filled balloon-heavy live shows (employing extensive use of lighting effects, mirror balls, video backdrops, streamers and droves of fans in animal-costumes) have been likened to birthday parties in terms of the amount of sheer joy present in any particular show. Q magazine was right; this is something that nobody should pass by. However, either for those who want to re-live their live experiences at will, or those who want to experience a part of Flaming Lips history, or even for those who haven't yet been able to make it to a Lips show - this hub strives to make available to all who desire it a vast back catalogue of free lossless live recordings of one of the most wonderful live bands ever to have come from this planet.

What is a 'wiki'?

A wiki is a user-editable informative website. In this case, this wiki is designed to help fans connect to the Flaming Lips Hub and download and share free, lossless recordings of Flaming Lips live shows. Think of this site as just a user manual - all the good stuff is located on the hub.

What the bloody hell is a 'hub'?

A hub in this context is a Direct Connect hub, a server which people connect to via various client programs which allow users to share specified files with other users on a peer-to-peer basis. The software has various other useful tools such as a search feature and is all centralised around a hub chat room. We recommend the latest version of DC++ as the best client out there for PC users. It's very easy to use, and once you are connected we will be glad to help you get used to using it.

Where do I find this crazy-ass DC++ software you speak of?

After installing DC++, how do I connect to the hub?

Assuming basic computer experience, you need to give DC++ your e-mail address and desired nickname (in file>settings). After this, go into connection settings and (for now) select "Firewall (passive, last resort)". (If you are confident at setting up port forwarding on your router, feel free to set up manual port forwarding now.) Then exit out of the settings and go to the Favourite Hubs window, accessible via the gold star. In here, create a new favourite and in the "Address" box enter flaminglips.no-ip.org. Leave the identification fields blank and the client will use the nickname you specified earlier. Click OK.

Check the auto connect box next to the entry you just created, double click the hub name and hopefully you should be connected within seconds :) if something has gone wrong, or all this is confusing, drop one of us an email, or check our simple instructions section for a more detailed walkthrough of how to connect, complete with helpful screenshots.

What is "lossless" audio anyway?

FLAC and SHN are two lossless audio formats. FLAC and SHN encoders compress down full quality audio recordings such as WAV to roughly two thirds their original size, whilst still maintaining the original recording in a lossless form. Lossless means there is no loss of quality at all, and when the audio is reconstructed, it will be a perfect copy of the original, bit-for-bit. This is vastly superior to MP3, WMA etc, which although they have a much smaller file size, to achieve this they throw away vast quantities of data which is then unrecoverable. Thus MP3, WMA and other lossy formats are not acceptable for use as an archival format.

How do I play FLAC and SHN files?

There are plugins available for most popular media players. For a media player which supports lossless formats out of the box, try foobar.

If your player of choice is Winamp, there is native support for FLAC - it should play these files automatically.

Alternatively, if you want to record shows to CD or need to decompress the files to WAV, or want to compress your own WAV files to FLAC or SHN, download a tool called Trader's Little Helper, which is an all-round useful tool for compressing/decompressing lossless audio and all related tasks.

Why are MP3s of live music so bad? I'd like to download shows small and fast

Firstly, MP3 is a bad format, irreversibly damaging the quality of music which traders strive to keep in archival quality so they can be enjoyed for years to come - the advantage of digital audio is just this, that it can be preserved in the original quality forever, free from the quality loss problems of making analogue copies of audio tapes. For an in depth discussion of the reasons behind MP3 being a bad format,please have a look at the document floating around people's shares called "Why MP3 Is Unacceptable As A Trading Format".

Secondly, after the quality drop has been explained by the document, please understand that tapers strive to record a live show in absolutely the best quality possible, putting their time, effort and a lot of their own money into the art of capturing a live performance - for their own enjoyment and that of others. To pollute the trading pool by converting their shows down to a tenth of the quality of the recording they went to long lengths to make, is really just an offense to their efforts.

Thirdly, to put down-converted MP3s of live music out there on the net, is to deprive other people (who don't know otherwise) of the original high quality recording. Further down the line there is going to be someone who would really quite like a lossless copy of the gig, and if the only version they have access to is a rough MP3 copy because it has populated the internet instead of the original one, then - well, that proves the point.

MP3s are just a nuisance to live music trading everywhere. By all means, convert a show into whatever format you like for personal use, such as on a portable MP3 player, but please, always preserve the original copy so as to offer it to others via DC++ or via trade on audio CD.

Where can I get help for the dc++ software?

Here! Just ask in main chat, the hub operators and members will be happy to help. Be patient - not everybody will be at their PC at the same time :)